Why does dictated Arabic or Hebrew text look backwards?

Dictated Arabic or Hebrew is usually not stored backwards. The Unicode Standard prescribes a memory order called logical order ¹, and the order on screen is a separate step. What looks backwards is the display. When right-to-left and left-to-right text share a line, the screen reorders each run, and the punctuation, spaces and numbers at the boundaries are where the order most often surprises you.

Mixed text is bidirectional by design

Arabic and Hebrew are written right to left, while Western digits and English words are written left to right. When digits written left to right appear inside Arabic or Hebrew text, the text becomes bidirectional, a mixture of right-to-left and left-to-right runs ². The display step has to decide how each run sits on the line. The Unicode Bidirectional Algorithm sets those rules, and each app runs its own version of them.

Punctuation and spaces move with their neighbors

Punctuation and spaces are neutral characters. They generally take the direction of the text around them ³. So a comma or closing parenthesis that sits between an Arabic word and an English word can take either side, depending on what comes before and after it.

Digits follow their own rule. The algorithm changes a European number to an Arabic number when the nearest strong character before it is an Arabic letter ⁴. That is why a number after an Arabic word can sit in an unexpected place relative to the words around it.

Why two apps can show the same text differently

The rules are fixed, but each app applies them through its own text engine, so the same stored text can look different in a note, an editor or a web page. We did not find a published test that compares how dictation apps display mixed Arabic and English, so treat any claim about one app's behavior as something to check on your own text.

What to do: proofread the boundaries

1. Read the punctuation next to every number and every English word first. Those are the places where the order changes.
2. Check that each parenthesis and quotation mark closes the expression you meant it to close.
3. Proofread the final text in the app where it will be published. A note app and a word processor can differ.
4. Keep the numbers and English terms short where you can, so there are fewer boundaries to check.

For the full list of spoken punctuation in these languages, see our guide to punctuation commands in other languages.

It depends on what the text contains

• Arabic or Hebrew with no digits and no English: the display problem rarely appears.
• Arabic or Hebrew with numbers: check every number and the punctuation next to it, since numbers are the most common boundary.
• Mixed Arabic and English: this is the hardest case, so proofread the English words and the punctuation around them first. The question on dictating Arabic dialects covers how mixing affects accuracy.

The order problem is separate from accuracy. A dictation tool can recognize every word correctly and still leave a parenthesis on the wrong side of a number. If you are learning to type the language yourself, the question on learning touch typing in Arabic explains how to practice the keyboard.